


Out of Time

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [76]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby has a frightened and injured creature to look after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Time

“Ready when you are, Abby.”

Abby turned her attention away from a small animal nestled in the hay in a cage inside one of the holding pens and turned to smile at the man in the doorway.

“Thanks, Joel. I’ll have him ready for transport in a couple of minutes.”

Joel Stringer, dressed in the black combat uniform favoured by the ARC’s military contingent, lounged against the wall inside the door. His dark hair – longer than the cropped style usually favoured by the soldiers – brushed the collar of his jacket and ever-present stubble shadowed his face. Despite the closeness of their relationship, when it came to field operations, the Special Forces captain was happy to defer to her knowledge of animal behaviour. She knew the combat shotgun slung over his shoulder would only be used as a last resort. Stringer had spent his teens as a hunt saboteur and held strong views on any unnecessary killing of the creatures that Abby considered they had a duty to protect. It was one of the things that had drawn her to the soldier.

They were only intending to make a short foray into the past; just long enough to return the Sinoconodon to what they hoped was a close enough period of time to allow it to find others of its own kind. The creature had been kept in the private zoo at Farnley Hall for just over two weeks since an anomaly had opened in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham and several of the small, primitive mammals had come through. As a result of Stephen’s tracking skills and an awful lot of patience, the rat-like Sinoconodon’s had been rounded up and returned through the anomaly, but after it had closed another of them had been found, too late to be sent back after the others.

The private zoo set in the extensive grounds surrounding Farnley Hall in Kent had proved to be the perfect home for animals lost in time. The permanently open anomaly inside a Faraday cage concealed by a long mound of grassed earth gave them a much-needed gateway to the past, which led into the middle of something Connor had dubbed a ‘spaghetti junction’ of anomalies.

The anomaly project had acquired Farnley Hall after the death of its owner, multi-millionaire Ed Mason, on one of his own ill-judged hunting trips to the past. Mason had been running safaris with a difference, charging his customers two million pounds each for a trip to the Cretaceous and the opportunity to take pot-shots at some of the largest and most dangerous predators that had ever lived.

His arrogance and greed had cost him – and three of his customers – their lives. As a result Farnley Hall had been handed over to the anomaly project while lawyers from the Ministry of Justice had set about the task of untangling Mason’s business dealings. His staff had been kept on but now reported to Lester, and Abby had been placed in charge of the zoo.

It was a responsibility that she found both exhilarating and daunting in equal measure. She was aided in her task by the fact that Mason’s keepers knew their stuff and seemed happy enough to have kept their jobs, even though it meant having a new boss and she had not detected any antagonism from any of them. Even Mason’s formidable secretary, Sandra Willoughby, had started to thaw out, although so far only a small iceberg had broken off from the main glacier, but Abby was happy with any slight gains that made her life easier. The woman was an excellent administrator, which was what mattered.

Abby pulled on a pair of thick gloves, picked up an animal carrying box and placed it next to the cage. The small creature cowered in the corner, blinking up at her out of round, dark eyes. Its long black and tan banded tail curled tightly around its body and its long snout twitched, lips drawing back to reveal a mouthful of sharp teeth. The Sinoconodon had a powerful bite and handling it unprotected would have been asking for trouble.

Connor and Cutter had both been excited to have found themselves in possession of such an early mammal and they’d been glad of the opportunity to study Archie, as they’d named their furry guest, for reasons that still escaped her. The long gap between the animal’s canine and cheek teeth had aided a positive identification, much to Connor’s delight. Measurements and photographs had been taken, observations recorded and human contact kept to a minimum. Abby was now about to transfer Archie into the container that would be used to transport him through what they were now confident was an anomaly leading to the early Jurassic.

When time allowed, and aided by Ed Mason’s records, Cutter and Connor had been examining the anomalies reached through the one in the grounds of Farnley Hall. They had already succeeded in repatriating some of the animals Mason had kept as a teaser for his customers, to convince them that he really did have access to past worlds. The phorusrhacos had still not gone home, but Abby was hoping it would only be a matter of time before they could be returned to their own world. The enormous flightless birds were fascinating but vicious, and several injuries had been inflicted by beaks that were capable of crushing bone and tearing the flesh of anyone ill-advised enough to get too close to them.

But even creatures as small as Archie needed treating with caution and respect. With long leather gauntlets protecting her hands and arms, Abby reached into the cage and seized him firmly by the scruff of his neck, placing her other hand under his hind legs for support as she transferred him to the carrying case. The Sinoconodon hissed in annoyance and promptly sunk his sharp teeth into the thumb of the glove.

“Ungrateful little bugger,” Stringer commented with a grin.

Abby succeeded in extricating her hand from the carrying box and shut the front back up. “Can’t blame him. OK, let’s get this done. Are the others coming through as well?”

Stringer nodded. “Cutter wants to check some of Mason’s notes to see if any of the anomalies have remained constant. Connor has some readings he wants to take.”

Abby rolled her eyes affectionately. Her friend always had some readings he wanted to take. Connor had been as happy as a pig in muck when the opportunity to study multiple anomalies had been presented itself. One of the Range Rovers had been kitted out with an array of instruments and Connor had spent any spare moment he could find camped out beside one anomaly or another. It had taken some persuasion for Lester to authorise trips to the past for the purposes of gathering data, but he had finally relented and, after some negotiation with the Special Forces Directorate, Stringer’s team had been assigned to the ARC on a permanent basis, to provide further back up, rather than the occasional cover he had given in the past.

She picked up the carrying case and followed the soldier out to the waiting vehicles. Connor greeted her with a wide smile. His hair stood up in damp spikes, fresh from a shower, and he was dressed in his usual assortment of charity shop clothing. Beside him in the driver’s seat, looking tanned and relaxed, Stephen cradled a tranquilliser rifle across his knees. At a nod from Abby, he swung his long legs into the Range Rover and started the engine.

She placed the cage into the back of another vehicle and carefully secured it in place and then took the driver’s seat, with Stringer riding shotgun next to her. Cutter climbed into the back seat and slammed the door, a leather-bound notebook already clutched in his hand. A third Range Rover containing four of Stringer’s team completed the convoy and took point.

They drove through the rolling parkland that surrounded Farnley Hall, skirting the edge of the enclosure that contained the Terror Birds. As ever, the birds treated the moving vehicles as something to be hunted and ran alongside the fence, the feathers on their head crests raised, yellow eyes eyeing the Range Rovers balefully. One of the birds lunged at the fence, squawking in irritation at being denied their prey.

“The buggers don’t improve, do they?” Cutter commented with a certain degree of affection.

“I’ll be glad when we can get them back home,” Abby said, accelerating across the short grass away from the birds’ compound.

“You and all the keepers,” Stringer commented. “One of the sods nearly had Tim’s eye out yesterday.”

“I’ve warned him to keep out of their way. I swear he thinks the damn things are misunderstood.”

“He doesn’t now. Even I’d learned a few new words by the time he’d finished cursing them.”

Abby laughed. Joel Stringer’s ability to produce a long string of obscenities without drawing breath or resorting to repetition was legendary, although she had to admit that Tim Penny, the 70-year-old head keeper who’d spent a life time working with animals, could run him a close second at times.

As they approached the long mound of earth that concealed the anomaly in the grounds of Farnley Hall, Abby flicked a switch on the Range Rover’s radio and said, “We’re about to go through, Ricky. We’ll be back in two hours, maximum.”

“OK, say goodbye to the little chap for me.” Ricky Carey, their field controller, was a mercenary who had worked for Ed Mason. He had ended up with a broken arm in the attack that had left several of the millionaire’s clients dead and seriously injured. Once out of hospital, he had been thoroughly debriefed by the ARC’s military contingent and then had ended up staying on, slipping back into his old role as a communications specialist. Carey had proved to be a useful addition to the team, running operations from the hall and keeping a watchful eye on all expeditions beyond the anomaly in the grounds, ready to dispatch back up if anyone forgot to check in on their pre-agreed schedule. With the amount of research trips being undertaken, a good controller was an important safety precaution.

Ahead of them, the end of the mound stood open. A turf-covered door that resembled a castle drawbridge had been raised, revealing the metal doors of the Faraday cage that blocked the electro-magnetic field created by the anomaly. Mason had gone to considerable lengths to hide what he’d regarded as a valuable asset. At a command from Carey, the automatic outer doors slid smoothly open. As the Range Rover containing the main military team entered the tunnel, the inner doors opened, and with no need to shield the signal from the anomaly from the ADD back at the ARC, the vehicles entered the tunnel one after the other. Carey would already have warned the technicians back at the ARC to expect the appearance of an anomaly on the ADD screens.

Abby had made the transition from one time to another many times, but even so, the sight of a myriad anomalies all sparkling like diamonds in the bright sunlight never failed to take her breath away. They hung in the air above the short grass of a green landscape that rolled away in gentle hills and dales in all directions as far as the eye could see.

“We’ve got a new one!” Connor’s voice cracked excitedly over the radio.

“Where?” Cutter demanded from behind her, turning around in his seat, trying to see what was different.

“Look up,” Abby told him, having spotted almost immediately what Connor was talking about.

Ahead of them, some 15 metres up in the air, an anomaly shone brightly, twisting in the air like a Christmas bauble.

Cutter promptly started scribbling notes while Connor hung out of the window of the second Range Rover like an over-excited puppy and started taking photographs.

“Close your mouth, Conn, or you’ll be catching flies,” Abby commented. “OK, guys, Joel and I will go straight through number 15 to release Archie. We should be back in under 20 minutes.”

The Range Rover containing the soldiers came to a halt and two of them jumped out, remaining behind as back up for Cutter and the science team. The others would accompany Abby and Stringer into the Jurassic. Provided nothing had changed through that particular anomaly, they would emerge onto a hillside covered by ginkgo trees and tall ferns. As ever, Abby found that she was holding her breath as she drove the Range Rover slowly into and through the anomaly.

Rain hit the windscreen and Abby reached automatically for the wiper control. It looked like they had emerged in the middle of a storm. Wind whipped through the branches of the trees and made the fern fronds sway to and fro. Something hit the bonnet of the vehicle, bounced off and made Abby jump.

“Pine cone,” Stringer commented. “It was nicer than this last time we were here.”

“We won’t need to stay long. I just want to get far enough away from the anomaly so that he doesn’t go dashing straight back.” After five minutes of slow driving, Abby flashed her headlights at the vehicle in front and said over the radio, “Stop by that big tree on the right. That’s as far as we need to go.”

The moment Abby stepped out of the vehicle she was soaked to the skin. It was akin to stepping fully clothed into a shower. Stringer grimaced in disgust, but was at her side as she lifted the carrying case out of the back of the Range Rover. With the three soldiers keeping watch, she carried the plastic container over to a patch of thick ferns and bent down to lift up the mesh grill at the front of the case.

“Come on, little guy, you’re home now.” She used the same low, soothing voice she always adopted when talking to animals. They had no idea what she was saying but were sensitive to tone and inflection.

Archie stared up at her, his long nose twitching as he took in the smells of his own time – or what they hoped was close enough to his own time. He took a cautious step towards the open door of the crate. When nothing stopped him, he took another step, his nose twitching again. A moment later he hopped out of the crate, sniffed again and then, without a backward glance, dashed off into the shelter offered by a large fern.

Abby smiled. “I think he’s happy to be home.” She dropped the wire grill back into place and returned the cage to the Range Rover. The rain ran down her face in rivulets, plastering her hair to her head. They had only been out of the vehicle for a few minutes but were already soaked to the skin.

As she opened the driver’s door, a sudden bellow somewhere close at hand caused her to turn around, looking for the source of the noise. The noise was that of an animal in fear and pain. Next to her, Joel Stringer frowned, a puzzled expression on his face.

“They didn’t have elephants in the Jurassic, did they?”

Abby presumed he was joking, but when the bellow came again, she was less sure. Stringer was right, it did sound like an elephant.

“Whatever it is, it’s not our problem,” she said firmly. They weren’t there to get involved in events, just to release an animal trapped out of time, and they’d already done that.

The noise was coming from behind a patch of ferns to their right, and she could see the fronds being shaken around by more than the wind. It went against the grain to leave behind an injured animal, but it wasn’t up to them to interfere in the food chain of the Jurassic.

“Abby!” Barratt, one of Stringer’s men, was gesturing towards the ferns. He was standing next to the lead Range Rover and clearly had a better view of whatever was going on. “I think you need to take a look at this.”

She exchanged glances with Stringer, shrugged and took a few paces in the direction indicated by Barratt’s outstretched arm. The noise was louder now, combining terror and agony in a way that was hard to ignore.

A large, brown shape was thrashing around in the midst of the foliage. The creature was the size of a Dartmoor pony with thick, coarse hair hanging in matted dreadlocks off a short, stocky body. It was surrounded by a pack of what looked like raptors, all jumping and biting at the creature’s flanks like hounds intent on bringing down a wild boar. The animal bellowed loudly, a long trunk thrashing around as it struggled to shake off its attackers.

Abby drew in a sharp breath. They were staring a baby mammoth about to be dragged down and killed, umpteen million years before it had even been born.

Blood streaked the heavy coat and it was clear that it was not proving to be any protection from the sharp beaks of the predators. They swarmed over it and the mammoth staggered and dropped to its knees. Abby watched in horror. They had a strict policy of non-interference so far as animal encounters between predator and prey were concerned, but this was something different. The creature had clearly strayed out of its own time through the anomaly cluster to end up there, in the Jurassic, about to be ripped to shreds.

“Abby,” Joel Stringer’s voice was low but urgent. “It’s your call, but it’s not going to last much longer…”

The Special Forces captain had swung his shotgun up in both hands but the barrel was still trained on the ground. His two men, armed with M4 carbines, also held their weapons in readiness, waiting for her command. Abby’s thoughts raced. There was no time to consult Cutter. Stringer was right, this was her call. She had absolutely no idea what the risk was of the mammoth’s bones ending up as anomalies in the fossil record. That was Cutter’s area, or Connor’s, or even Stephen’s, but certainly not hers. She knew that only an infinitesimally small number of dead creatures were immortalised in that way. On top of that, she also knew from listening to the science teams that examples of creatures out of their own time did exist in the fossil record. Helen Cutter had devoted her professional career to finding and studying such examples and her husband had taken up that line of research after her disappearance.

This sort of thing no doubt happened all the time. It was just that she’d never witnessed it before…

The raptors were all over the baby mammoth now, ripping out both hair and flesh. The creature’s struggles were getting weaker and if she didn’t act soon, it would be beyond hope.

“Save it!” The words were out of her mouth before she could bite them back. If the raptors had been in the process of bringing down their normal prey she wouldn’t have interfered but this was something she couldn’t just ignore. They couldn’t risk the mammoth ending up as an out-of-time fossil, no matter how slight that risk might be.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Stringer racked the slide on his combat shotgun and fired twice in quick succession over the heads of the raptors. The predators stopped in the act of shredding their victim and looked up. Blood stained their beaks and splattered their bright green and yellow plumage.

Stringer pumped another round into the chamber of his shotgun and fired again. As the raptor pack flinched from the noise, the soldiers took advantage of their uncertainty and jumped forwards, using their weapons like clubs, and kicking out with booted feet at the predators. With an outraged squawk, one of the smaller raptors leaped off the body of the fallen mammoth and fled into the undergrowth. A kick from Barratt sent another one after it and then Stringer waded in, with the other man at his side.

The raptors, caught unawares, were no match for three determined soldiers and moments later, they had all been driven off into the forest, helped on their way by another two blasts from Stringer’s shotgun. Abby ran forwards and dropped to her knees next to the stricken creature. It was breathing heavily, its shaggy chest rising and falling too fast. The mammoth tried to struggle to its feet but failed, slumping back down onto the bloodstained ground.

“Get the travois from the Range Rover,” she ordered. “We need to get this animal out of here and back to the hall. I can’t do anything for it here.”

Barratt and the other soldier, Ainsworth, hurried to do her bidding. At Abby’s insistence, each of the Range Rovers carried a lightweight but strong extendible aluminium A-frame. The vinyl fabric was stretched between the two poles and was sufficiently strong to take the weight of the baby mammoth. They’d developed this system of transport as a means of returning tranquillised animals to their own time when they were too big to be carried on a simple stretcher. The pointed end of the A-frame was attached to the tow bar on the Range Rover, which would then be able to drag the stretcher across the ground. It wasn’t the most comfortable method of transport, but most of the animals weren’t in any position to complain.

All of the soldiers on the field teams were well-practised at animal handling and with minimal direction from Abby were able to manoeuvre the injured mammoth onto the travois.

“Use the straps.” The ground between them and the anomaly was soft and relatively free of obstacles but she couldn’t take the chance of the creature being jolted off the stretcher.

The rain continued to fall, soaking into the mammoth’s long brown hair, spreading the blood from numerous wounds in an ever-widening stain. While Barrett and Ainsworth had been assembling the stretcher, she’d administered a sedative to quieten the animal’s struggles and the drug was now taking effect.

As she checked the mammoth’s breathing, Stringer calmly announced, “There’s about to be a loud bang. The blood is attracting some unwanted attention.”

Abby looked over her shoulder and saw the head of a medium-sized raptor peering out of the undergrowth.

Stringer aimed over the creature’s head and fired a blast from his shotgun that peppered the fern leaves, spraying chunks of vegetation around and sending the raptor scurrying backwards with an outraged squawk.

It took the four of them to transfer the mammoth to the stretcher and there were times when Abby didn’t think they were going to succeed, but after a mix of pushing and pulling combined with a hefty dose of brute force and ignorance, they finally succeeded. Ainsworth jumped into the driving seat and, with Abby, Stringer and Barrett walking beside the travois to keep any opportunistic predators at bay and to help manoeuvre the stretcher over fallen branches and other obstacles, they started to make their way back to the anomaly.

Their task became easier once they parted company with the Jurassic and reached the short grass of the anomaly junction area. One of the things Cutter and Connor had been trying to establish was what era was playing host to the cluster of rips in time, but so far, beyond the fact that the presence of grass told them that it could be no earlier than the late Cretaceous, they were currently none the wiser.

Their return attracted the attention of the group who had stayed behind to do the monitoring and when Cutter saw the state of the animal they’d brought through with them, he swore under his breath.

“Would you prefer me to have left it behind?” Abby demanded. Her words came out more defensively that she’d intended, but Cutter had demonstrated often enough that he held strong views on any actions likely to affect the timeline.

Cutter’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean that, lass. You’ve done the right thing. If that ended up in the fossil record next to a T. rex we’d have some explaining to do. Lester’s blood pressure wouldn’t have stood something like that.” He looked down at the injured animal with compassion in his eyes. “Do what you can for it. We’ll finish here and follow you back.”

The journey back to Farnley Hall was accomplished without any problem, although Abby chafed against their slow progress, even though she knew they had no choice but to make the transfer as carefully as possible.

Ricky Carey met them in the main zoo compound. “What do you need?” he asked, not wasting time on unnecessary conversation. “I’ve called Tim and he’s on his way.”

Abby stared down at the mammoth and mentally catalogued its numerous injuries. “I need a vet. If I’m going to stand a chance of saving its life I need someone else to work with me, someone who knows more about warm-blooded creatures than I do.”

Lizards and reptiles were her speciality. If it had hair or feathers she knew enough to get by, and she’d learned more during her time with the anomaly project, but her knowledge of anaesthetics was limited to what she had to know to safely tranquilise animals of different sizes. She needed more than that now.

“One vet coming up,” Carey said lightly, although Abby could see that the concern in his eyes belied his tone.

With help from Tim Penny, the head keeper, Abby supervised the transference of the baby mammoth to a large, low padded table in the zoo’s veterinary facility. The padding was there to minimise the risk of muscle damage in a large animal that was likely to be immobilised for any length of time. Penny had spent a lifetime working with animals but in an emergency he seemed happy to defer to Abby. In truth, she would have been happy for someone else to have taken charge in that situation, but abrogating her responsibility wasn’t an option.

“Get the clippers and start getting rid of some of this hair, Tim,” she said, setting up the necessary equipment to monitor the mammoth’s heart rate. “Joel, there are a couple of sets of clippers, help him please.”

The two men did as she asked and soon the floor was awash with bloodstained russet hair. Barrett, who’d accompanied them into the medical block, grabbed a brush without waiting to be instructed, and started sweeping up the mess that they were making.

With the covering of thick hair removed, Abby could start to assess the extent of the damage. The raptors had swarmed over the animal like piranha fish in a feeding frenzy and although the matted coat had proved some protection, it hadn’t been enough to stop them taking numerous chunks out of its flesh. Luckily no major blood vessels seemed to have been severed as if that had happened they would have lost the mammoth already, but the wounds were everywhere and some of them were deep.

With Tim Penny’s help, she started to swab the wounds to enable her to assess the extent of the damage. The deeper ones would need stitching and there were just so many of them… Abby sucked in a deep breath and did her best to stay calm. This wasn’t the first time she’d treated an injured animal, but the mammoth was in a far worse state than anything she’d had to deal with so far. She wondered if it might be kinder to put the creature out of its misery, but she didn’t want to give up without a fight.

“I reckon it might pull through,” Tim said quietly. “Saw a young lion once that had been ripped apart worse than this chap and it survived.”

Abby nodded and carried on cleaning and checking the wounds. She knew from her time at Wellington Zoo that animals were capable of some remarkable feats of recovery, which was why she intended to keep on fighting. The old zoo keeper’s words confirmed that view.

“Joel, carry on cleaning the wounds. I need to check its heartbeat.”

The steady thud of the baby mammoth’s heart was reassuring, but it was showing some signs of starting to come awake and they couldn’t risk it starting to panic.

“Frankie Hughes will be here in ten minutes,” Ricky Carey told her from the doorway.

Abby spun around. She knew the name. Frankie Hughes was a heavy-drinking former vet who had ended up in financial difficulties that had led to her doing work for Ed Mason in the zoo. Abby hadn’t met the woman before, but it looked like that was about to change.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Ricky shook his head firmly. “She already knows what goes on here, Abby. OK, she’s off her head with booze most of the time, but that just means no one is likely to take her seriously if she starts shooting her mouth off.”

“I need a vet, not a drunkard,” Abby snapped. She’d suffered enough from the neglect of an alcoholic mother to have little or no tolerance for those who succumbed to the effects of over-drinking.

“I’ll make sure she’s sober,” Ricky said.

“She’d better be.” Abby turned back to the task at hand. Despite her irritation, she knew the man had done the right thing. They could have hardly called on the RSPCA for help and Lester would throw a fit if they brought an outsider in.

By the time footsteps in the corridor alerted her to the fact that help was on its way, Abby and Tim had exposed the wounds on one side of the animal to enable those to be dealt with before they moved on to the ones on its other side. Abby looked up in time to see a slender woman in her late-40s, with short dark hair sticking up in damp spikes, walk into the white-tiled room. Her movements had the deliberate air of someone over-compensating for a slight unsteadiness. From her wet hair and the damp patches on her faded denim shirt, it looked very much like someone – probably one of Stringer’s men – had sobered her up by the simple expedient of sticking her under a cold shower and holding her there until it took effect.

The woman stared for a moment at the injured animal and then demanded, “What have you given it?”

Abby told her and earned a nod of approval.

Frankie Hughes listed to the mammoth’s heart, checked its breathing and then started to rummage through the well-stocked cupboards in the infirmary to find what she needed.

“He’s coming round,” Tim warned, as one of the mammoth’s legs started to twitch.

“We’ll soon put a stop to that,” Frankie said, surprising Abby with the note of decisiveness in her voice. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and set two bottles of clear liquid on the work-surface on one side of the room. “The antagonist is that one,” she said, pointing at one of the bottles before starting to fill a large syringe from the other. She was referring to the antidote to the powerful immobilising agent she was going to use to anaesthetise the mammoth. It was a cardinal rule of working with such chemicals that the means of reversing their effects must always be on hand. She indicated a spot on the mammoth’s thigh. “Shave that and clean it up.”

Abby quickly trimmed the hair back to the animal’s skin and cleaned it with iodine handed to her by Tim Penny. The mammoth’s numerous wounds were still bleeding freely, but there was no way they could work on a semi-conscious creature. Under normal circumstances, an animal would be carefully weighed so the right dosage could be calculated, but on this occasion they would have to rely on Frankie Hughes calculating the right dosage by eye and experience, the way Abby had done with the tranquilliser in the Jurassic. Frankie slapped the exposed skin hard and rammed home the needle. It took less effort than it would have done with the tough skin of an older animal, but it will still by no means an easy task. One it was embedded, she added the syringe to the needle and depressed the plunger.

“Monitor its heart rate,” she told Tim.

The former vet was clearly a woman of few words, but despite the strong smell of whisky on her breath, she appeared to know what she was doing. But when it came to threading one of the curved surgical needles, she suddenly faltered. Her first few attempts failed, drawing a frustrated curse from her. Abby reached over, took hold of the needle, threaded it and handed it back.

“Can you handle this?” she asked.

Frankie looked down, frowning at tremor in her hands. She closed her eyes and swayed slightly.

“Frankie!” Abby’s tone was intentionally sharp. If she was going to save the animal’s life, she needed this woman’s knowledge of anaesthetics and the extra pair of hands she could provide. “Pull yourself together, you can do this!”

A pair of disconcertingly sharp eyes stared at her across the body of the prone mammoth. “You know fuck all about me, so what makes you so certain of that?”

“Mason wouldn’t have used you if you weren’t any good,” she said, hoping that her guess was correct. “Now come on, we can’t afford to waste time.” She knew that all the time the baby mammoth was lying on its side it was at risk of breathing difficulties. Their lungs weren’t made to function in that position, making it prone to a build up of fluid and potential collapse, especially in its current weakened state.

Frankie let out a pent up breath that stank of a mixture of alcohol and coffee, the latter no doubt having been forced down her after the cold shower she’d been subjected to. As she reached out to the baby mammoth, her hands stopped shaking and experience and familiarity started to override the effects of the whisky.

As soon as Abby was certain the other woman could cope, she turned her attention the cleaning up as many of the more minor wounds as she could, working quickly with Joel Stringer as an able assistant. The hum of the air-conditioning and the rasping breathing of the anaesthetised mammoth were the only sounds in the room. They worked in silence and in spite of the cool air that was circulating around them, Abby found that she was sweating profusely and a glance at Frankie Hughes told the same story. With Stringer and Barratt handing them more swabs laden with iodine, a routine was soon established for both women. Find an injury, clean it, stitch it, move onto the next one.

Moving the baby halfway through the procedure was tricky, but the room was equipped with an overhead hoist and, careful not to exacerbate any of the injuries, they were able to turn the animal to work on its other side.

The smell of sweat and blood hung in the air so thickly that Abby could almost taste it. Accompanied by the rank smell of excess alcohol being sweated out by Frankie it made an unpleasant combination. The arrival of Ricky Carey with two large jugs of iced water was welcomed by everyone.

“Make up a basin of camomile extract, Tim,” Abby said. They were coming to the end of the patching up process and she wanted to be able to wash the mammoth down thoroughly. She knew that the keepers at Wellington Zoo had favoured that for the care both of wounds and the abscesses that their elephants had been prone to. For all they seemed robust, elephants actually had surprisingly sensitive skin and it seemed safe to presume that the same would be true of the young mammoth.

“I thought you mainly dealt with lizards,” Frankie Hughes commented, tying off the surgical thread after sewing up another deep gash left behind by a raptor’s beak. The fact that her instruction hadn’t been countermanded told Abby that she’d made the right choice.

“You can’t work in a zoo without spending some time around the elephants,” Abby said. “I nearly ended up doing a research project on their dung.”

An amused grin lightened the expression on the other woman’s face. “You can’t work in a zoo without getting covered in shit, either.”

Directly on cue, a loud fart echoed around the room.

The tension that had settled on the infirmary like a heavy blanket broke apart in laughter.

“You don’t think it’s funny when I fart,” Stringer said looking aggrieved.

“That’s because you do it in bed,” Abby retorted.

“Does he hold your head under the duvet afterwards?” Frankie asked, staring down at the young animal with a fond expression on her face.

“He’s still alive,” Abby said. “That should answer that question.”

Still laughing, the two women stood back to admire their handiwork. The baby mammoth was a patchwork of shaved areas and stitches, with only a few tufts of russet fur left, and even those had been closely trimmed. It looked a mess, but by no means as much of a mess as it had looked when they’d started. The animal’s youth and the fact that it was obviously slightly underweight had been a factor on their side in closing the wounds. The skin was more supple than that of an older animal, and the fact that it was thinner than it should have been meant their was less stress on the stitches that they put in, but even so, Abby wouldn’t be surprised if some of the wounds they’d closed didn’t reopen. That was something they were going to need to keep a close eye on over the next few hours, especially when the mammoth started to come out of the anaesthetic. Frankie administered a shot of broad spectrum antibiotic as a precautionary measure and then they were ready to move the animal.

With the help of the system of hoists and overhead rails that its former owner had installed in the well-equipped animal hospital, Abby and Frankie supervised the transfer of the baby mammoth to what was known in the trade as a wake-up crate, essentially, a large, padded box where the animal could be held upright while Frankie administered a drug that would wake it up. Once there, all they could do was watch and wait.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” Abby asked, as Frankie finished the injection and disposed of the needle.

The former vet gave a tired smile. “He’s got a reasonable chance, but it’ll be a long haul. You’re going to need to keep a careful eye on him. You know what they’re like for getting abscesses.”

“We’re both presuming a mammoth reacts the same way as an elephant, but we don’t really know, do we?”

Frankie shrugged. “We don’t know, but we can make an educated guess. Anyway, you’ve got the chance to find out now. I don’t suppose you’re going to be bundling him back to the past in this state, are you?”

“He can stay as long as he needs to,” Abby said softly, reaching out to stroke the mammoth’s limp trunk. She looked up and met Frankie’s eyes again. “So can you. We need a vet on the staff, today proves that.”

“You would have coped without me.”

“I’m not a qualified vet. I’m more the equivalent of one of Joel’s field medics. Yes, I can cope in an emergency and I’ve had to learn a lot of things in the past couple of years, but I can’t be here all the time and we can’t bring anyone else into a situation like this.”

“I drink too much and I pissed my practice down the drain because I couldn’t cope with the admin.”

Abby laughed. “We have Sandra Willoughby to cope with the admin. All you have to do is stay sober and help me look after the animals.”

The look of cautious hope in the older woman’s eyes reminded Abby of a dog that had spent more time receiving kicks than pats, but still yearned for something different.

Abby held out her hand. “Deal?”

Frankie Hughes took it and shook. “Deal.”

“I think I’ll leave it to Cutter break it to Lester that the payroll has just expanded again.” Abby grinned. “Right now, we’ve got a baby mammoth to look after.”

The mammoth’s trunk started to sway gently. It was starting to come out of the anaesthetic.

Only time would tell whether their efforts had been successful, but for now, Abby was content to hope that they’d at least managed to give the young animal a fighting chance. And the mammoth wasn’t the only one to have been given a chance that day. Ricky Carey had made the right call and Abby was glad she’d managed to put aside her own prejudices.

They needed all the help they could get. Today had proved that.


End file.
